Honor Among Thieves

Tales of Sevrin

Starsingers

Book 1

Copyright 2011 Elaine Cunningham

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

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http:/www.elainecunningham.com

To William Cunningham

This has been too long in coming.

Thanks for years of love, laughter, dream sharing,
brainstorming, and the occasional much-needed kick in the ass.

This story has been in the works for a very long
time. Many people have helped me along the way and continue to
offer friendship and support. There are too many to mention, but I
can’t let the opportunity pass to offer heartfelt thanks to the
following people:

William H. Horner III, freelance editor
extraordinaire. Thanks for catching errors, pointing out echoes,
and waxing snarky about the attribution.

Rainfeather Pearl, the cover artist. Thanks for the
lovely portrait of Honor. I cannot express how refreshing it is to
have cover art that actually looks like the character.

Dave Gross, writer, editor, and all-around great
guy. Thanks for the feedback on early versions and for the terrific
line-edit of the first few chapters.

Susan Mates, Renaissance woman. Your observations
about story and theme helped shape this tale in several important
ways. Thanks for your friendship, insight, enthusiasm, and
encouragement.

Andrew Cunningham, mathematician, former Dungeon
Master, first-born son, and one of the smartest people I know.
Thanks for brainstorming world-building issues and raising some of
the best questions I’ve ever encountered. You must have inherited
logic from your father.

Sean Cunningham, philopher, writer, editor, younger
son. Thanks for cheerful acceptance and for sharing your love of
language and knowledge. People who are passionate about what they
do are a source of inspiration. Thanks for that, too.

Byron Cunningham, graphic artist and nephew. Thanks
for designing the
Tales of Sevrin
logo.

R.A. Salvatore, an author and friend to whom I owe
more than I can express. For starters, thanks for the introduction
to the StarWars EU, the opportunity to write an EverQuest novel,
and for suggesting that Gromph should be Liriel’s father.

Ed Greenwood, a wonderful human being and the most
endlessly, effortlessly creative mind I have ever encountered.
Thanks for the Forgotten Realms. You also play a mean game of
double entendre
chicken.

William Cunningham, high school sweetheart, love of
my life, Settlers of Catan nemesis. Thanks for everything.

Not long ago, in a land of nightmare and dreams, a
fairy maiden committed an unspeakable crime. In her defense, it
seemed like a good idea at the time.

She received the usual sentence: Exile to the mortal
realm until she could record enough entertaining tales to balance
the scales of fairy justice.

Alas, her arrival in the land called Sevrin came
twenty years too late. Had she been caught in some earlier bit of
mischief, she might have witnessed the fall of a powerful sorcerer
in a summer of bloodshed, heroism, and, from all accounts, highly
entertaining explosions.

To her dismay, the land into which she came bore
little resemblance to the realms described in fairy tales of
old.

Magic was dead, or so the adepts who now ruled
Sevrin

would have people believe. The old races had
withdrawn deep into the forests, the seas, and the stone—so deep
that many mortals believed them gone beyond recall.

And what did this reborn land offer in return?

Alchemy, an Art that sought new names for things
that always were and always would be.

The greatest of these alchemists, the adepts, did
not stop at philosophy. They declared the gods dead and embarked
upon their own frenzy of creation.

They created potions that healed or destroyed on a
grand scale. They created new weapons, useful machines, clever
toys, and wondrous metal creatures that owed their semblance of
life to clockwork and alchemical mysteries.

These innovations brought wealth and fame to the
adepts, who shared their fortune with those they ruled. As a
result, the land was prosperous and peaceful, the people as
complacent as cows.

In short, it was no fit place for a fairy.

Without conflict there can be no story. If the exile
hoped to return to the fey realm, she would have to find trouble or
create it.

Fortunately, there were in this land mortals who
refused the new ways, and members of the old races who were not
content to fade into legend.

The fairy found them. And she soon learned, to her
peril and delight, that neither adepts nor rogues were everything
they believed themselves to be, nor were they all they hoped to
become.

This was promising indeed. As every storysinger
knows, the more brightly a hero shines, the darker the shadow he
might someday cast.

The elf had never slept, not once in a hundred years,
so her first awakening was a thing of mystery and terror.

Something was dragging her from unfamiliar depths,
away from horrors she could not quite recall. She understood now
why the drowning child she’d pulled from the river some years back
had fought and flailed about in blind panic. She would do the same
if she could move.

The elf became aware of the distant murmur of voices
and a plodding metallic heartbeat. That sound was familiar. A
clock, the humans called it.

Humans! Here, in the deepest part of the forest!

Sorrow came swiftly on the heels of shock. Until now,
she’d denied any suggestion that the forest might shelter a
traitor. Not in centuries, not since Pharimen the Red last awoke
and took wing, had any elf betrayed another. But she could think of
no other way any human might find the Starsingers Grove.

“You’re awake!”

The voice was male, the tones deep and rounded with
delight.

“Try to open your eyes.”

She consulted her eyelids and found them willing. For
several moments her vision swam with colors that should not be:
patches of bright red and blue and yellow and a strange bilious
green never found in the forest. Light glinted from what appeared
to be metal trees decked with leaves ranging in hue from silver to
iron grey to the dull green of old copper.

The strange sleep-mist faded. She found herself in
the center of a cluttered room, lying on a raised platform that was
nothing like the low, cozy beds she’d once seen in the forester’s
cottage.

A metallic monster, a thing more clock than man, bent
over her, regarding her with empty silver eyes.

Instinct prompted her hand toward her dagger. To her
horror, she could not move.

“That will do, Feris,” said that pleasant male
voice.

The creature straightened and spun about. Metal
whirred and crunched as it strode away, its motions stiff but
precise.

Gentle living hands helped her sit. She bore the
human’s touch and, to her surprise, found him as pleasing to behold
as he was to hear.

Not a young man, nor precisely an old one, he stood
taller than most elves. His garments were simple but dyed a rich
deep blue her people favored for starlight rituals. He kept his
wheat-gold hair pulled back from a narrow, clean-shaven face. His
smile failed to reassure, but she found his gaze soothing, for his
eyes were bright with intelligence, and the color, a blend of green
and brown, was similar to the wood-hazel hue her own would turn
come summer.

Thinking of the Greening made her aware of the room’s
Midsummer warmth.

She glanced at her hands. They were still winter
pale, and the thick braid of hair draped over her shoulder was
still the color of snow and shadows. No hint of green spoke of
coming spring.

Relief surged through her. She couldn’t have lost
more than a few days to her first sleep.

“My men found you in a forest clearing, gravely
wounded,” the human said. “They brought you to me for healing.”

The memory of that night flooded back—the reason for
the starlit gathering, if not the attack that must have ended
it.

“Your men.”

To her ears, her voice sounded flat from lack of use,
devoid of music or meaning. But something of what she was feeling
must have sung through. For a long moment the human stared at her
as if trying to recall the name of an elusive tune and hoping the
answer might be written on her face.

His eyes widened in understanding.

“Empty night!” He spoke softly, but with the peculiar
emphasis humans gave to their oaths and curses. “You believe
I
was responsible for that appalling slaughter.”

For one terrible moment, her mind envisioned the
scene his words painted.She thrust the image away.

“If not you, then who?”

The man turned and reached for a decanter on a small
table, a long-necked bottle fashioned of blue glass and beaded with
moisture. He poured a small amount of pale gold liquid into a cup
and handed it to her.

“Small sips,” he cautioned.

She sniffed at the liquid. It was some sort of fruit
wine, sweetened with honey and diluted with a tisane of healing
herbs.

The herbs surprised her. She had not expected city
humans to be so civilized.

The first sip sent a cooling wave through her. Her
parched body demanded more. She allowed herself two more sips
before setting the cup aside.

“Tell me.”

He took a moment to refill her cup before answering.
“You are in the city of Sevrin. Have you heard of it?”

She brushed the question aside with a flick of one
hand. “Tell me of the forest, and your purpose there.”

“It may reassure you to learn that I have as little
interest in the forest as you do in Sevrin. My men entered in
pursuit of rogue gatherers.”

For a moment, she was tempted to ask what separated
“rogue” gatherers from the everyday sort—men who hunted rare
creatures and members of the old races for reasons too grim to
contemplate. Elves killed such men on sight. She had not known,
however, that some humans tried to limit their activities.

“Did your men catch them?”

“Everyone who attacked you is dead,” he said in a
tone one might use to reassure a fearful child.

She resisted the urge to hurl the cup at his head.
“So. You have stolen my revenge as well as my freedom.”

The man had the nerve to look affronted. “Do you see
chains on your wrists? Bars on the door? This is not a dungeon, and
I am no barbarian.

“I am Rhendish,” he said, naming himself in tones of
solemn majesty. “I am one of seven adepts who rule the city of
Sevrin. As such, I share responsibility for keeping order and
seeing justice done. Justice,” he said, tapping his forehead with
the fingertips of one hand. He moved that hand down to rest over
his heart. “Not revenge.”

Clearly, his understanding of such things differed
from hers. Revenge required thought and planning. Elven justice, on
the other hand, tended to be swift and certain.

She took a deep breath and steeled herself to hear
hard truths.

“And the others?”

Regret washed over the man’s face. “Only you
survived.”

Later,
she reminded herself.
Later
she
could mourn.

“The ground was frozen too hard to permit burial. My
men gathered the bodies beneath a single stone cairn.”

She nodded. That was not their way, but it would
suffice for now. No elven secrets would be revealed by tooth and
worm and weather. No elven bones would sing to the touch of
starlight.

But there remained one way the forest people could be
undone. Speaking of it was dangerous, but she saw no other
choice.

She took a moment to observe her surroundings,
seeking clues to Rhendish’s nature.

A dizzying array of colors assaulted the eye, coming
from a hodge-podge of bottles, books, and countless oddly shaped
pieces of metal. Shelves lined the white-stone walls. Scrolls and
stacks of parchment littered a long writing table fashioned from
polished wood. Richly embroidered hangings covered the windows and
rippled in muted winds. The overall impression was wealth and
chaos.